Enabling Collective Lunacy by Remaking the Universe in One’s Image

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 29 Dec 2025

Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens - TRANSCEND Media Service

Anticipating Controversial Renaming in the Course of the US Moon Mission

Introduction

An Executive Order by Donald Trump, immediately following his inauguration, focused on renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and Denali to Mount McKinley (Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness, The White House, 20 January 2025). Despite Trump’s explicit claims to be especially worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, recent months have seen the Department of Defense renamed to the Department of War (Restoring the United States Department of War, The White House, 5 September 2025). Controversially the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was renamed by Trump appointees as The Trump Kennedy Center (David Remnick, Trump Dishonors the Kennedy Center, The New Yorker, 20 December 2025). The pattern has been evident in the removal of portraits of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and George H.W. Bush from prominent, traditional display areas in the White House to a largely private stairwell area used mainly by the first family and staff. In the case of his immediate predecessor, Joe Biden, this has taken the form of iconographic mockery (Trump claims to void all documents signed by Biden, citing autopen use, The Guardian, 3 December 2025)..

The pattern is evident in the announcement of a “Golden Fleet” of “Trump-class battleships” (President unveils new ‘Trump class’ fleet of battleships, CNN, 23 December 2025; The Golden Fleet’s Battleship Will Never Sail, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 23 December 2025). That reframing process could well be extended to the Kennedy Space Center, especially given the recent executive order calling for Americans’ return to the Moon by 2028 (President Donald J. Trump Launches a New Age of American Space Achievement, The White House, 18 December 2025).

The most recent renaming announcements have been seen by some critics as an effort to distract from Trump’s close association with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — exemplified by Trump’s opposition to public release of the Epstein files, despite his electoral promise in that regard. The most recent release of the controversially redacted files was scheduled for the same period as those announcements. Despite a further large release on 19 December 2025, the government did not meet the 19 December deadline to release all Epstein files under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Less than a day after the release, sixteen files disappeared from the public webpage without explanation.

Curiously Trump’s renaming proclivity has taken a different form through his highly controversial tendency to publicly insult individuals and peoples collectively. The tendency for the acclaimed leader of the free world to demean peoples — other than Americans — has become especially evident in response to immigrants to the USA — currently defined as “illegal” — in marked contrast to the pattern of migration by which the population of the USA has grown over centuries. Trump’s recent rhetoric has drawn sharp criticism for dehumanizing migrants and foreigners through animalistic, waste-related, and filth-laden caricatures. In a December 2025 Cabinet meeting and Pennsylvania rally, Trump repeatedly called Somali immigrants “garbage” he doesn’t want, “filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime,” and skilled only at “attacking ships” — framing the Minnesota’s Somali community as a polluting infestation (Trump revives slur while discussing immigrants from Somalia and other ‘disgusting’ nations, NBC News, 11 December 2025; Lawmaker Calls Trump a ‘National Embarrassment’ After President’s Latest Anti-Immigration Tirade, Time, 10 December 2025).

Trump notably evoked worldwide criticism through his distinction of “shithole countries” (‘A New Low.’ The World Is Furious at Trump for His Remark About ‘Shithole Countries’, Time, 12 January 2018) — a qualification inviting generalization in the light of the condition in many countries, including the USA (Earth as a Shithole Planet — from a Universal Perspective? 2018).

Trump’s style is most notably exemplified by his use of demeaning, caricatured insults toward female reporters, often invoking animalistic or appearance-based mockery to belittle them during press interactions (Brydie Monaghan, Every time Trump has insulted female reporters – and it’s a lot, Indy100, 24 November 2025; Meredith Kile, ‘Piggy,’ ‘Ugly’ and ‘Terrible Person’: Donald Trump Ramps Up Attacks on Women in the White House Press Corps, People, 26 November 2025). These tropes function as a rhetorical damnatio memoriae, stripping professional legitimacy via bodily mockery rather than erasure — asserting dominance by renaming through insult, much like overwriting landscapes or predecessors with a personal mark.

Even more problematic is the ease with which people are now authoritatively labelled as “terrorists”. Such use of “terrorist” and related labels has drawn extensive criticism as a strategic, often casual expansion of the term beyond its traditional security meaning into a tool of domestic and partisan politics. The term has been applied to non-state actors threatening Trump’s initiatives, including domestic opponents and dissenters — characterizing certain protesters, vandals, or activists as “domestic terrorists,” thereby blurring the line between crime, protest, and terrorism. This is paralleled by the expansive use of “anti-Semitism” against critics of Israel, with both patterns serving as mechanisms to delegitimize dissent by conflating policy disagreement with existential threats. Such ease risks normalizing emergency measures — legal crackdowns, deplatforming, or reputational ruin — while alienating moderates and fueling real prejudice by diluting the gravity of the terms (Being a Terrorist by Implication in a Terrific Environment, 2025; Elaborating a Declaration on Combating Anti-otherness, 2018).

Ironically Trump’s long-documented problematic relation with women — now purportedly a feature of major political significance in the Epstein files — augurs badly for any future American relation to the Moon. As the archetypal “Other”, cross-culturally, lunar deities carry strong feminine connotations in numerous traditions, often linked to cycles of fertility, emotion, intuition, and receptivity, with the goddess Selene as a pivotal Greek personification — hence the study of selenography. In a world which tends to deprecate mythology, the high-tech NASA-led Artemis program to return to the Moon — has been named after the goddess Artemis, the twin sister of the god Apollo, so strongly associated in the popular imagination with the earlier NASA Apollo program (1961-1972). Although the name is not mentioned, the Artemis program was formally established in 2017 by Donald Trump (Presidential Memorandum on Reinvigorating America’s Human Space Exploration Program, 11 December 2017). Within the mythic system, the switch from Apollo to Artemis, bypassing Selene, is symbolically loaded even if not formally debated.

The following AI-enabled exercise explores — through its various connotations — the role of naming in framing the symbolic renewal of Earth’s engagement with the Moon. In the light of the importance of naming in the Trump presidency, the argument focuses on the implications for collective memory of the process of naming and “un-naming”, with the latter recognized by the appropriately obscure Latin term of damnatio memoriae (“damnation of memory”), indicating exclusion from official accounts (Charles W. Hedrick, History and Silence: Purge and Rehabilitation of Memory in Late Antiquity, 2010). The focus follows from previous concern with the sustainability of collective memory given questionable assumptions about increasing memorability (Societal Learning and the Erosion of Collective Memory, 1980; James W. Botkin, No Limits to Learning: Bridging the Human Gap: A Report to the Club of Rome, 1979).

The concern follows from a previous focus on renaming (Renaming and Reframing Continually in the Face of Hubris, 2025). The case of the Gulf of Mexico can be understood as potentially heralding other initatives in support of a new American agenda (James Liddell, ‘Red, White and Blueland?’: Republican unveils bill to rename Greenland, Independent, 11 February 2025; David Moye, Social Media Reacts To Bill To Rename Greenland ‘Red, White And Blueland‘, HuffPost, 12 February 2025).

Especially intriguing in this period is the minimal effective resistance to renaming, irrespective of its potentially fundamental psychosocial implications. This complicity in the extraordinary initiatives of the acclaimed leader of the free world can even be understood as suggesting that those protesting righteously are effectively framing him as a scapegoat in a psychosocial process which only the future will recognize (Framing Trump as Global Scapegoat to avoid Implications of Complicity, 2025).

TO CONTINUE READING Go to Original – laetusinpraesens.org

Share this article: email mastodon facebook 🔗 copy link

DISCLAIMER: The statements, views and opinions expressed in pieces republished here are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of TMS. In accordance with title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. TMS has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is TMS endorsed or sponsored by the originator. “GO TO ORIGINAL” links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the “GO TO ORIGINAL” links. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

There are no comments so far.